Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op):
In the hon. Gentleman’s historical diversion of a few minutes ago he referred to the difficulties that arose when we had different timezones throughout the UK, but he now seems to be proposing the possibility of separate Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish time zones. Does that provide another example of a new-found collusion between English nationalism and Scottish nationalism?
Mr. Yeo:
I hope that it will not be seen in that way. The confusion I referred to arose where there were lots of time zones with odd differences between them; a five-and-a-half minute difference between one part of the country and another can be quite confusing. Plenty of countries have more than one time zone within their borders, but invariably the differences in time are organised in multiples of half an hour or one hour—I do not think that any country still has odd-minute differences. The evidence from other countries is that it is workable to have separate time zones.
Mark Lazarowicz:
Of course it is workable, but there is a difference between the UK and somewhere such as the United States of America which has four or five time zones, but is considerably geographically broader than the UK. To have two, three or four time zones in a relatively small country such as the UK would be unusual, if not unique.
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